Knotty Mouse

Hubby took me out to Big Box Crafts yesterday so that I could get some sewing & jewelry findings (I probably have 5 bags of crimp-beads hidden in my craft room by this point) and I found this gorgeous yarn to make my sister-in-law a Calorimetry headband for the box of goodies I’m sending with the family to Hell,Ga. The yarn is Paton’s Shetland Chunky (70/20 ack/wool blend) in Highland Plains variegated colourway.. and I’m so sorry that I can’t keep it. Thankfully the pattern takes so little yarn that I still have over half a ball (my trusty scale says the ball still weighs in at 70g out of 100g) to make my own for next winter.

The stats on the project are as follows: Paton’s Shetland Chunky in the Highland Plains variegated colourway. I used approx 30g from the 100g skein. Size 4.5mm/ 7US knitting needles (addi circs) and a 84 stitch cast on. I knit until it was half as wide as I wanted it and then started the decrease rows.. its 4 inches wide at the center point. I finished it off with a ‘vintage’ button from my stash of thrifted/estate sale/stolen from my mom/yard sale buttons. I started this last night during an episode of CSI: Miami and finished it earlier today.. these take only a few hours of knitting to complete.

Now.. lets see if I can finish my brother-in-law’s cabled hat before tomorrow at noon when my MIL comes over to take us to the mall. I’ve got a movie from Netflix that has been collecting dust.. so I’m hoping that I can knit and watch ‘The Prestige’ at the same time.

Because Stefanie Japel’s (aka Glampyre) designs were my first knitted wearable items (we won’t talk about the hat that would only fit a ConeHead) I have a certain fondness for her patterns. The “surprise” patterns from Knitty are up and inside is a pattern by Glampyre called “cropped Cardigan with Leaf Ties“- love! This is one of those patterns that I do believe I actually need to get off my ass and knit.. because I am absolutely in love with it. I know that its from her “Fitted Knits” book (which is really gorgeous) but I haven’t had any money for books since hubby quit his last job.. I’m hoping maybe one of the relatives will slide me a little money for Mothers Day so that I can add it to my knitting book collection. As for the other designs in the surprise… eh. I can’t say that I’m going to be knitting a parasol anytime soon.. even if it IS pretty.

While I really should just hit ‘publish’ on this impromptu post.. its early and I have no one else to talk to. I’m putting the rest of this under a ‘cut’ tag for those who don’t want to read my rambles. Read the rest of this entry »

About a week ago I entered a contest over at My Paper Crane and won this cool “mail love” package - Munchkin claimed almost the entire package for himself except for the strawberry lip gloss and the postcard. Do check out her wonderful plush creations over at My Paper Crane.. I especially like the ‘used tissues’ and the ‘moldy bread’!

Earlier today I was greeted at the door by a huge white dog (with no collar) that apparently had escaped from a nearby home. You can see that my cat was completely unthrilled by its presence at the door. This was the scene at the top of the steps where the cat camped out until the dog left.. she was thumping her tail against the floor so hard it sounded like a man stomping his feet. She has this look like she’s saying ” I don’t know if you realize this.. but there is an ugly, stupid, 4 legged white thing outside that is CLEARLY not a cat. I’m very disgusted that its here and I’m afraid of what the neighborhood cats might say about me if they see it hanging around our door all drooling with its tongue hanging out. Why DID you give that horrid beast water? Mom.. I’m not sure I know you anymore.”

By the time I got back home from getting Munchkin off the bus he had disappeared… I hope he made it home safe to his family and is getting lots of love and hugs tonight.

Most of my day was spent spinning some South African Fine roving from Spunky Eclectic’s shop. The colorway is called “Leaf Peep” and I am really enjoying spinning this new (to me) fiber. I stepped out of my comfort zone a bit with colors but I’m glad that I did because I needed a change from all of the purple I usually spin.

I usually don’t ‘prepare’ my fiber before I spin.. but I saw a similar photo on a blog recently (if it was you.. please let me know so I can credit you..) and a light went off in my head. A short time preparing fiber lead to a more even spun single and a lot less stopping and starting to tear up roving. Clearly I’m slow on the uptake on this one.. but I’m definitely going to be doing this more often because I love the results.

EDITED TO ADD: I’ve gotten a few emails about how I’ve “prepared” the fiber in the basket..  I split the roving in half so that it was equal parts for plying (should I decide to ply..) and then started splitting those bundles width wise until I got thin, equal strand which I rolled up and threw into the basket. What you are seeing there is about 2 oz of ‘prepared’ roving ready to be spun up. Its helping me get a lot more even results.

Kitty pictures are just because.. as if there had to be a reason for kitty photos? Clearly she’s got the right idea on how to spend a weekend!

I’m back from computer-upgrade hell.. and for the most part things are back to normal here at Chez Mousie.  Things are a little different from the way they were before.. I’ve got new programs for my mail service and some other new things to use - along with a faster processor and a bigger hard drive. I had about 3 gigs free on my other hard drive and was dreading the thought of having to start deleting photos off of my computer.

Life in general got a lot weirder in the last few days.. and Munchkin’s behavior has taken a turn for the undesirable within the last week. I’m starting to wonder if everything I’ve done for the entire span of my child’s life was absolutely the wrong choice.. and its driving me insane. His attitude has been complete crap lately (within the last month) and he got in a lot of trouble at school for it… he’s been ‘good’ all year up until this point. I’m baffled as to when my sweet little boy disappeared and this smart-assed monster appeared in his place.
I did get a little bit of knitting done while I was away.. I’ve completed the first Koigu sock and am half-way through the foot portion of the second one.  I also cast on for a pair of socks out of Wool-Ease worsted in Loden (khaki green..) for my sister in law’s Hannukah (don’t laugh..) and graduation gift. Those are going pretty fast on size 5 needles.. but I’ve stalled out because they are HORRIBLY boring.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

I am definitely having one of those days where I should have just said ‘the hell with it’ and crawled back into bed rather than staying up and facing the day. My day started at 5am when our neighbors cat woke us up by serenading us with numerous acts of the kitty opera (the long version) right outside the damn window. I should have just gotten up and stayed up but instead went back to sleep and had bizarre dreams until 735am.. when I woke up without the alarm.

Unfortunately Munchkin’s bus leaves at 750 and its a 5 minute walk.. so that left a very short amount of time to get him dressed, fed, lunch & snack made.. and get myself dressed. I was rushing to put my shoes on and fell down the front steps on my ass. I’m ok.. just a bit sore and glad that it was the INSIDE steps instead of the brick ones outside. We made it to the bus stop just in time.. but I spent the entire walk back listening to my neighbor who is having serious marital issues (as in her husband is a cheating slime-sucker who deserves to be run over by a truck a few times..) all before morning coffee. I got back to the house and went to make said coffee.. and ended up spilling the nearly full pot (all 10 cups of it) all over the kitchen and myself! I suppose that I should be thankful that the coffee was cold, but I don’t really care because it sucked AND it left me without my reserve of very strong coffee to make iced coffees with all day.

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Before Munchkin went to bed tonight I made him come help me pick the winners for my 3 year blog anniversary contest out of a (Kureyon hand knit..) hat while I took pictures of the results.
The winner of the movie quotes contest is: Micky of Charmingly Wicked! You win a trashbag filled with Amish porn & week old brussel sprouts! Congratulations! I’m kidding.. you win a llama,llama, duck project bag, 2 skeins of jewel colored mohair yarn, some bamboo needles, and munchies… please send me your snail mail address!
The winner of the stitch markers/comment contest is: ShadKitty! I’ll be sending you a set of stitch markers from the shop.. let me know if you have any preference when you drop me an email with your address!

Thank you to everyone for commenting and playing along! Y’all are awesome!

Cheese-Cake for everyone! Today marks THREE years from the first post over at my Blogger blog and honestly I’m sort of shocked that I’m still here. Recently there have been a lot of bloggers who are quitting their blogs and moving on.. and I thought for sure I’d be one of those within the first year. I never imagined having my own web-space and shop.. let alone being here for three years. As usual.. thanks to everyone who comes here, reads my nonsense and comments! I love being part of the knit-blogging community.. and I’ve met some wonderful friends both in real life and online. Thank you for sharing my life.. heck, I talk to some of you more than I do my own family!

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I actually finished a pair of socks! These are my first pair of toe-up socks AND my first short row heel.. and I’m pretty happy with them. As you can see, the heel is a bit wonky but I don’t really expect that many people to be staring at it when I wear the socks. When I first finished them (Tuesday night) and put them on to look in the mirror.. I was struck with how absolutely ugly they were. I’m actually quite amused with them now… they’re so ugly that they’re cool, I think. The stats on the socks are as follows:

• Wendy’s “Figure 8″ Cast on
• measurements from the Universal Toe Up pattern
• size 2 US dpns for the foot and 32″ size 2 US circular for the cuff (magic loop)
• Regia Crazy Colors 4ply (from Jane’s destash sale sometime last year) in the “I seem to have misplaced the ballband” colorway. I do remember that the name had something to do with fruit.. “Tutti Fruitti” or something.
• completion time: shockingly.. I think these only took a week.

I’ve knit about 2 pairs of socks (plus numerous ’strays’) using the standard ‘top down’ technique.. and I have to say that for me personally.. I prefer the toe-up method. I feel like they go faster because there isn’t all of that increasing and decreasing for the toe and the gusset - I could just knit without really thinking about what row I was on.. or which way the increases needed to lean.. etc. I also prefer the short-row heel to the heel flap because it doesn’t require a lot of steps.. when you’ve run out of wrapped stitches (unless you’ve screwed up royally) you’re back at the number you started with and you can just pop the instep stitches back on needles and continue to knit.

I’ve just turned the heel on the pointy Koigu sock which is not so pointy anymore after its emergency toe-up surgery..  and I’m about to start a patterned cuff. Watch out.. not only am I now knitting socks.. but I’m knitting “girly lacy” socks too. I’ve crossed over to the dark side people..

I figured I’d post an update here as well.. a few new things were added to the shop today- including the “hippy sheep” bag you can see to the left. They’re printed on ‘patches’ made from thrifted teeshirts and were fused to the bags and then zigzag stitched with my sewing machine. I think they turned out pretty cool. I really wanted to keep one.. but I was good and put them in the shop. (/shameless plug)
Easter with the family was.. exhausting as usual. I get really tired of getting picked at about the way we choose to live our lives.. get over it people! Yes.. my 5 1/2 year old son has “long” hair (think.. the Beatles) and no.. I’m not planning on “making him cut it” any time soon. Sheesh! Munchkin had a good time since he is too little yet to understand everything that the adults were saying.. and he got MORE candy (the ‘bunny’ got a little carried away at Big Box Store’s 99 cent candy display..) and was able to play baseball and go on an egg hunt. I got to eat ham (somebody put pineapple on it though.. which really detracted from the experience.. but I lived..) and cheesy broccoli - and was able to knit another inch of my sock.

Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates!

My fathers family is of Ukrainian descent and around Easter there would always be tons of Pysanky eggs in a bowl on the table from the local church group. My grandmother and father both knew how to “write eggs”.. but sadly I never learned. You can find a site and gallery with more beautiful egg photos here - thanks for the link Gothknits!

I’m going to go to the in-laws and eat ham until I drop over…

Slowly but surely I’m progressing on these toe-up socks… I’ve got one finished, the second in the pair is about an inch from the short-row heel, and the third sock is about 2 inches from the heel. I don’t know if its obvious from the photo but the Regia Crazy Colors socks are very close to being identical twins- which is something I’m very happy about though I didn’t plan. I did start the second sock with orange purposely so that at least the toes would match.. but had no idea that the skein I joined in would continue to match all the way up.

I got a lot of knitting time in on the second sock by lantern light last night.. we were without power for a few hours when a tree fell on some power lines in a nearby neighborhood. I threw on a wool sweater, boiled water for tea on the stove (thankfully we have gas for cooking.. I just had to light the pilot myself since the starter is electric) and sat down on the couch to knit until the power returned. It got a little cold in the house but by the time we started questioning lighting a fire in the fireplace.. the electric company said we were about 30 minutes from our power returning. I’m one of those strange people who actually enjoy the power being out.. as long as its only for a day or so and we’ve got wood for the fireplace.

Time sort of got away from me this week with my son being on Spring Break -but I’m still planning on a small update of new items to the shop on Monday around mid-day.  I’m going to dinner at the in-laws tomorrow.. so I doubt that I’ll blog.

Here’s wishing everyone a Happy Easter, Passover, Spring Break, and/or Sunday! Personally.. I’m celebrating Happy “Someone cooked a big ol’ sugar cured ham” Day! Yum.

I was having an online discussion earlier with my friend Amputeehee and she mentioned Sleeping Beauty. Since both of us are spinners.. we started thinking about what on earth she would have pricked her finger on since nothing on a modern wheel is sharp. Google-fu to the rescue!

In the story of Sleeping Beauty, Princess Briar Rose/Rosamond is cursed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel, thus causing her to fall into a death-like sleep. The origins of this folk tale are sometimes debated by spinners, as most modern spinning wheels themselves lack a point upon which pricking a finger is possible. However the very old spinning wheels lacked the modern flyer and bobbin, and spinning was done off of the point of the spindle (see “Great Wheel” illustration above)and the constant wear made the spindle extremely sharp. One suggested explanation is that Rose pricked her finger on the point of a distaff. Another theory, proposed by master spinner Alden Amos suggests that Rose caught a bit of moldy flax (called boon) under a fingernail and suffered an allergic reaction.

That information is courtesy of Wikipedia’s spinning wheel entry.

By the way.. I’ve finished a toe-up sock and cast on for the second! I’m also half way through the Koigu toe-up sock that I posted about in the pointy sock post. I can’t knit on it right now because its in recovery from undergoing sock-toe reconstruction surgery… I’ll be posting some photos of its ordeal later in the week.

(Clicking on the photo should take you to the Flickr set with the zoo photos.. I hope)

I’m attempting to use my long neglected Flickr account to post some photos taken at the Atlanta Zoo yesterday by Munchkin. Its Munchkin’s “Spring Break” - so we’re trying to do some fun things as money allows. I have more photos from my camera for another post.. but I wasn’t very impressed with the Atlanta Zoo. I’ve been to the Philadelphia Zoo more times than I can count (I had a membership and would go a few times a month..) and went to the zoo in Washington, DC when I was younger - and I loved both of those. I can’t put my finger on why I wasn’t very happy with this zoo.. but part of it was that I didn’t feel like there were enough animals to see or that the habitats were particularly useful for human viewing and phototaking.. or for the animals themselves. I guess it just seemed a little “sad” to me.